To prepare students to be effective practitioners in an increasingly diverse United States, medical educators must design cross-cultural curricula, including curricula in women's health. One goal of such education is cultural competence, defined as a set of skills that allow individuals to increase their understanding of cultural differences and similarities within, among, and between groups. I...

A fundamental change is needed in the way clinicians provide care to patients, including the way the workforce is educated for the demographic challenges of meeting the needs of a diverse nation. Health disparities exist for many reasons, including the failure to prepare providers for mastery of a cultural competency skill set. There are many cultural competency frameworks available to provide ...

The complex needs of Black Minority Ethnic (BME) Deaf people are often misunderstood and inappropriately catered for. A lack of understanding around cultural differences and language needs, can leave the individual very isolated and marginalised in society. It is important to understand the backgrounds of BME Deaf people, their identity issues, their communication, family and social surrounding...

The growing national racial and ethnic diversity has created a greater need for health care delivery systems and health care providers to be more responsive to unique patient needs, that goes beyond meeting the immediate health problems to include attention to other critical component of patient care that take into account cultural competency such as health literacy, health beliefs and behavior...

BACKGROUND Maternity services struggle to provide culturally appropriate care that meets the needs of women from diverse populations. Problems include simplistic understandings of ethnicity and the role of culture in women's lives, and stereotypes held by health practitioners. OBJECTIVE To explore the extent to which cultural context makes a difference to experiences of breast-feeding support...

Is collaboration between U.S. and Moroccan university-students to study intercultural communication together through distance education feasible? This study focussed on determining the needs of students, educators and administrators in Morocco’s higher education system in order to learn how to address those needs in the design of a proposed distance education project. Moroccan culture in genera...

Cultural theory has evolved over the past 20 years to become an important framework for understanding how groups in society interpret danger and build trust or distrust in institutions creating and regulating risk. This paper examines the theoretical roots of cultural theory, traces its passage in the risk literature, and explores its value in current risk management issues. It concludes that c...

Tangible, embedded and embodied technologies can enrich cultural heritage sites. Their design requires a solid understanding of the specific site, the needs and interests of user communities and stakeholders. Here we investigate how the physical and socio-cultural context influence potential design solutions despite of a seemingly similar context: historic cemeteries.

Inequality and exclusion are characteristic of the experience of UK South Asian communities. In health care, community needs are often not addressed by health and social welfare services. An increase in cultural competency is now part of identified policy. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which there is evidence of cultural competency amongst professionals concerning South Asia...

BACKGROUND Pregnant Indigenous women suffer a disproportionate burden of risk and adverse outcomes relative to non-Indigenous women. Although there has been a call for improved prenatal care, examples are scarce. Therefore, we explored the characteristics of effective care with First Nations women from the perspective of prenatal healthcare providers (HCPs). METHODS We conducted an ethnograph...